Aaron Berhane, former editor-in-chief of Eritrea’s now-banned largest private newspaper, Setit, escaped arrest in September 2001 and launched Meftih newspaper in Canada.

Since Zaid Tewelde's husband, an Eritrean freedom fighter
turned playwright and journalist, was arrested in September 2001, she has spent
each passing day coping with the burning questions of her two young sons, age 9
and 10, "Where is my dad? When are we going to see him?" And she is not
alone. Like Zaid, the wives of journalists Seyoum Tsehaye, Dawit
Isaac, Yusuf Mohamed Ali, and Temesghen Ghebreyesus, among others, have
endured the same haunting questions 365 days a year for
a decade.

It feels
like it happened just yesterday. It was 7 a.m. on an average day in September in
Asmara, Eritrea. My brain was still
reshuffling the information I had gathered about the terrorist attacks on the WorldTradeCenter a week earlier. I
was writing an article on it for the next issue of Setit,
the twice-weekly newspaper of which I was editor-in-chief.